OOH Uncut Podcast: Tom Shea
Tom Shea, Co-Founder & CRO, Adgile Media Group, joins host Rick Robinson, CEO, PJX Media, on OOH Uncut, the podcast featuring thought leaders in the Out of Home media world.
July 17, 2023
Tom Shea Discussion on OOH Uncut Podcast with Rick Robinson
Rick Robinson: Hi everybody this is Rick Robinson with PJX Media and today I have Tom Shea he's the co-founder and CRO of Adgile Media group. And just to make sure, you know who they are. They turn the last mile delivery trucks into mobile billboards, on behalf of consumer brands. And they are most visible. Most evident in core urban markets, Top 10 markets, but they're available in the top 50, Tom's say hello to everyone.
Tom Shea: Hello everyone. Rick, thanks so much for having me on
Rick Robinson: Glad to have you glad to have you. Tom I think you represent one of the most energized bright fresh voices here in the out of home space. So we're excited to hear from you.
Tom Shea: I appreciate that. Well, yourself and the PJX is a group I've long looked up to and decided to make this connection.
Rick Robinson: Right on. Well more to come. We'll see if you like the question and so question is very direct. It's what I ask everybody. What can out of home do that no other medium can do?
Tom Shea: Okay, yeah, it's a great question and I think a relevant one, you know, I think there's a lot - it’s fraud free, it can't be skipped or ignored, one of the most efficient ways to get a message out quickly and effectively, earned media potential. You can plan nationally, but execute locally, but I think if I, if I really had to drill down and there's a story behind this but I think there's something really interesting about out of home’s ability to humanize a brand. And so I'll give you an example of what I mean by that. I was, I was working with a client recently and I was sort of just prying like, you know, why out of home, you can put your media dollars in a variety of places. Why do you think out of home? It's part of your core strategy. And what I heard in return was quite interesting. They said in a world where brands spend so much time, energy, and resources, trying to find their consumers, out of home allows consumers to find your brand. And I think there's something really interesting about that in the digital age where we've been so hyper-optimized and people are hammering people over the head with these ads. This sort of allows people to find and discover the brand more organically and you know I think while this is more in the context of our media format specifically, sort of building off on that and talking about the humanization of a brand.
You know, we do truck side advertising and there's something really interesting from a behavioral psychology element about that. That informs why we do so much work in the consumer context. Because guess what, when people see an advertised for brand on a delivery vehicle, 96.3% of those individuals are under the impression it's delivering for the advertised for brands and what plays out and what we've learned by.
Rick Robinson: And that's a good thing. That's a good thing.
Tom Shea: It's a good thing, right? Because what we've learned that's played out and from like a data, performance and attribution perspective is when people are seeing these assets, that are seemingly deliver product and market. People are saying, Wow, that that brand, I guess they're moving a ton of products and I guess all of my neighbors are consuming that product. And so when you think about the creative ways that you can leverage this medium and you know, every I think different format has their own interesting elements and reasons to believe. Well, I can really only truthfully speak on the one we represent. I think it's interesting to be able to create this Upswell and opportunity of, of people thinking that all of their neighbors are consuming that. So they should give that a try too, and you can sort of speak. You can almost like speak it into existence. And, and so, this humanization this element of building trust in an IRL context, in such a an age where there's digital fatigue, I think is incredibly fascinating,
Rick Robinson: Yeah, and that and just to dig into discovery, right. Discovery when and you're discovering it, when you're not alone, you're discovering at the same time. Other people are And every guest I've had so far and I think you're the fifth or six person I've interviewed they go right to it. Now, I know that measurement is what we all talk about, right? And we've been told by brands Gee, I love, I love a great billboard, but if you could just measure it better and prove to me, what it does to the lower funnel, I would buy more and what's interesting with the guest here is the ones like yourself, even because I know you have a great measurement offering. but where I expect you to go right to measurement you don't and you go to humanization to serendipity, as Anna Bager put it to discovery. Somebody I interviewed last year who said out of home was away in, as opposed to being in the way, which is a lot of other digital and programmatic. So you know, it's funny when I started in this business I was told that out of home was intrusive and an uninvited guest. And now the tables of turned and it's seen as welcome and a relief and kind of chill and friendly and easy in a way. Now how do we take that sentiment that out of home Is humanizing a brand and turn that into hard facts.
Tom Shea: Yeah, it's a great question. I think something that often people get like stuck with. People who are not in the throes of this are tempted to measure things or think of things, very superficially and maybe that's comparing Cpms. But what I think, what people don't realize and where this humanization actually starts to deliver hard value is this concept? That's way harder to measure than CPM that I like to call impact score? So, it's one thing to think like, Hey, we got a five dollar CPM here and a five dollar CPM here, they're the same. But in truth, when you're able to infuse the, the format with a lot more of those growth marketing attribution elements, the story that gets told time over time again, is the impact score that is immeasurable for out of home is material and meaningful and so as you've shared like, we've definitely led with out of home attribution and measurement for that reason because that's where the story is best told.
And I think I want to make a case for why out of home is better at supporting retail than digital advertising, and I'm never gonna directly square up against digital and say, It's like a bad medium. I think it's an incredible always-on medium that can be really targeted. But when you think about trying to support retail, right, like I do a lot of consumer, something that's really interesting is meta and all these platforms. They're really good with their machine. Learning models, to opt them eyes at serving media, and advertisements to people who are online shoppers. And when you think about these machinery learning models, you're getting served an ad on Facebook. You're clicking on it. They're following you via pixel to see whether you bought the product and if you do the algorithm recalibrates to find people that look like you have the same interests but also skew towards being an online shopper. And I think the reason we get activated in our industry gets activated so much more in the context of retail support. Is this idea that we can reach people that these digital channels don't have a business incentive to reach. Like Facebook is not doing the full loop funnel to Hey did this, move the needle in retail and therefore it's media serving algorithms and machine learning models are not recalibrating to, reach those people.
Rick Robinson: Okay, so we're at our five. So I'm going to stop you. We're gonna have you back, I promise you that. But out of home is reaching real people in the real world who are ready to buy in the real world. And that's what I'm hearing from you. And so everybody you heard it here out of home, humanizes brands, it creates this moment of discovery out on the street, there's adjacency and context which becomes very powerful. The impact of that is meaningful. Tom, thank you for your time. I hope you have an awesome week and terrific upcoming weekend here. This holiday weekend.
Tom Shea: Thanks so much Rick. Thanks for the opportunity.
Rick Robinson: Take care, man.
